The Birmingham Libraries Cooperative Mechanisation Project

It was late in 1968 that news was first made public about the mechanisation project being undertaken jointly by the University of Aston library, Birmingham University library, and Birmingham Public Libraries. The basic objective of the study is to investigate ways in which three local libraries can together use the BNB MARC service, and in particular establish a common machine readable data bank of bibliographic records. There are major differences between the libraries: two are large and well established, and growing comparatively slowly. The other is relatively small and expanding rapidly.